How a Proper Maintenance Strategy Reduces Your Airport Downtime

How a Proper Maintenance Strategy Reduces Your Airport Downtime

Have you ever been on a flight that got delayed and assumed it was because of the weather? You’re not alone. In fact, many people assumed that flight delays are caused by extreme weather, but this couldn’t be farther from the truth. According to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, 78% of flights this year have landed on time with only 0.56% of all flights delayed by weather. That’s less than 1%! What’s more interesting is that 5% of all flights this year were delayed due to Air Carrier Delay. Air Carrier Delay is a delay that was within the airline’s control, and most often, is due to required maintenance.

A good airport serves two primary functions. First, they need to safely get travelers onto airplanes and out of town. This involves everyone’s least favorite parts of air-travel – check-in, going through security, waiting at the gate, taxiing, etc. Also, it’s subject to the whims of scheduling and weather, which travelers and airport employees can’t control.

The second quieter function of a good airport is to keep passengers comfortable during the time they spend in the airport. That involves things we take for granted like keeping terminals well-lit and bathrooms clean. Because the first set of functions is largely out of an airport manager’s control, it’s crucial that this second set is met and exceeded. Doing so requires not only a diligent and well-trained team, but more importantly, a robust computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) coordinating the thousands of parts, planes, and people needed to keep things humming along.

A CMMS works by streamlining all your asset and location information, making normally difficult processes like work order generation and inventory management a breeze. For instance, those well-lit terminals mentioned earlier don’t just stay well-lit on their own. Rather, the CMMS software knows how long your light bulbs typically last. It also knows who changes them and where the replacement bulbs are kept. When the system detects a light is approaching its replacement date, it will automatically generate a work order and notify the necessary maintenance worker of the issue and location of replacement parts.

That means things get fixed before they break, creating a consistent and calm environment for passengers to travel through. Even better, you can integrate our inventory features to your purchasing system to automate basic parts reordering for when those bulbs start running low.

Eagle Technology’s CMMS works by streamlining all your asset and location information, making normally difficult processes like work order generation and inventory management a breeze. Here’s how our CMMS can help with your airport maintenance:

Plan Maintenance Tasks

Scheduled preventive maintenance (PM) tasks set up in the CMMS can improve operational efficiency and decrease labor and repair costs.

The CMMS can track labor hours per equipment and per employee. Knowing how much time is required for regular maintenance and repairs provides valuable data for budgeting or repair vs. replace decisions.

Stored maintenance procedures and checklists for each asset can ensure that equipment is properly serviced in a consistent and timely manner with the proper safety instructions included with every procedure.

Recorded asset data on scheduled maintenance and regular inspections provide documentation of compliance with safety regulations.

Track and Manage Maintenance Work Orders

A CMMS stores and generates scheduled work orders based on pre-set asset maintenance schedules or run times.

Authorized users throughout the airport can submit work requests directly into the CMMS and receive auto-updates via email when work is completed.

Airport maintenance employees can open work orders, enter data, and then close scheduled maintenance work orders in the field. Having your CMMS integrate with mobile hand-held devices makes maintenance even more productive and cost-effective.

Un-scheduled maintenance and asset downtime throughout the asset lifecycle can be tracked via work orders.

Reports help airport managers justify “repair or replace” decisions with downtime analysis and “causes of failure” tracking—information that can guide the set-up of preventive and predictive maintenance programs to optimize asset and labor performance.

Manage Equipment and Spare Parts Inventory

A CMMS allows for the effective management of all equipment and spare parts inventories.

For maximum efficiency, parts inventory records can be linked with asset data, vendor files and manuals, maintenance scheduling, and even purchasing records.

Better spare parts management means that parts are available for both scheduled and emergency repairs of critical equipment from jetways to escalators, and the thousands of assets that are necessary to keep airports running smoothly and safely.